Future crime, p.29
Future Crime, page 29
“Look,” the teacher said, “reading is important. No matter what you want to do when you get out of the Center, you’ll need to be able to read well. Unless you can read okay, Dr. Tenny won’t let you leave here. So it’s up to you.”
“Okay,” said Danny. “Give me the book. I’ll learn it.”
But as he walked down the hall to his next class, Danny told himself, Let ’em think I’m trying to learn. Then they won’t know I’m working on a break-out.
Chapter Ten
Danny went to two more classes that morning: history and arithmetic. He fell asleep in the history class. No one bothered him until the teacher poked him on the shoulder, after the rest of the boys had left.
“I don’t think you’re ready for this class,” the old man said. His thin face was white with the struggle to keep himself from getting angry.
The arithmetic class was taught by Joe Tenny. To his surprise, Danny found that he could do most of the problems that Tenny flashed on the TV screen.
“You’ve got a good head for numbers,” Joe told him as the class ended and the boys were filing out for lunch.
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll be a bookie when I get out.”
Joe gave him that who-are-you-trying-to-kid look. “Well, you’ve got to plan on being something. We’re not just going to let you go, with no plans and no job.”
They left the classroom together and started down the hall for the outside doors.
“Uh … the history teacher told me not to come back to his class. I … uh, I fell asleep.”
“That was smart,” said Joe.
“Well, uh, look … can I take something else instead of history? Maybe learn Italian … . I already talk it a little … .”
“I know.”
Danny felt his face go red. “Well, what I mean is, maybe I could learn to talk it right.”
Joe looked slightly puzzled. “I don’t understand why you’d want to study a foreign language. But if that’s what you want to do, okay, we’ll try it. Just don’t fall asleep on the job.”
Grinning, Danny promised. “I won’t!”
After lunch, Danny went up to the gym. One of the older boys showed him where the lockers were. Danny changed into a sweat suit and went back onto the gym floor. He lifted weights for a while, then tried to jog around the track up on the catwalk. He had to stop halfway; it got too hard to breathe.
Got to get one of those pills.
He went back to his locker and took a pill. After a few minutes he was able to breathe easily again. He went back to the gym and found a row of punching bags lined up behind the ring. No one was using them. Lacey was nowhere in sight. Danny felt glad of that. Ralph Malzone came from around the corner of the ring, though.
“Hiya, Danny. Starting training for the fight? You only got two weeks.”
Jabbing at a punching bag, Danny answered, “Yeah, I know.”
Ralph looked bigger than ever in his gym suit. He towered over Danny. “C’mon back here, behind the bags. I’ll show you a few things.”
For the next half-hour, Ralph showed Danny how to use his elbows, his knees, and his head to batter and trip up his opponent.
“All strictly illegal,” Ralph said, grinning broadly. “But you can get away with ’em if you’re smart. Main thing, with Lacey, is keepin’ him off balance. Trip him, step on his feet. Butt him with your head. Grab him and give him the elbow.”
Danny nodded. Then suddenly he asked, “Hey Ralph … where can I get a gun?”
“What?”
“A gun. A zip’ll do. Or at least a blade … .” Ralph’s smile vanished. His round, puffy face with its tiny eyes suddenly looked grim, suspicious.
“What do you want a piece for?”
“For getting out of here, what else?” Danny said.
Ralph thought it over in silence for a minute. Then he said, “Go take a shower, get dressed, and meet me in the metal shop. Two floors down from here.”
“Okay.”
Danny took his time. He wanted to be sure Ralph was in the shop when he got there.
The metal shop smelled of oil and hummed with the electrical throb of machines that cut or drilled or shaped pieces of steel and aluminum. Boys were making bookshelves, repairing desk chairs, building other things that Danny didn’t recognize.
There was a pair of men in long, shapeless shop coats wandering slowly through the aisles between the benches, stopping here and there to talk with certain boys, showing them how to use a machine, what to do next. Back in the farthest corner, Ralph was tinkering with some long pieces of pipe.
Danny made his way back toward Ralph’s bench. No one stopped him or bothered him.
“Hi.”
Ralph looked coldly at him. “I just been wondering about you. Asking about a gun. Somebody tell you to ask me?”
Danny shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
Ralph whispered, “I ain’t told nobody about this. But I’m showing it to you. If you’re a fink for Tenny … you ain’t just going to see this, you’re going to feel it.”
Keeping his eyes on the closest teacher, who was several benches away, Ralph bent down slightly and reached underneath his bench. He pulled and then brought his hand out far enough for Danny to see what was in it.
“Hey!” Danny whispered.
It looked crude but deadly. The pistol grip was a sawed-off piece of pipe. The trigger was wired to a heavy spring. The barrel was another length of pipe.
“Shoots darts,” Ralph whispered proudly. He took a pair of darts from his shirt pocket. They looked to Danny like big lumber nails that had been filed down to needle points.
“You made them yourself?” asked Danny.
Ralph nodded. He put the darts back in his pocket and tucked the gun inside his shirt. It made a heavy bulge in his clothing.
“Now I got to test it. There’s a spot out in the woods I know. No TV eyes to watch you there. If it works, then tonight I go sailing out of here. Right through the front gate.”
Danny gave a low whistle. “That takes guts.”
“With this,” Ralph said, tapping the gun, “I can do it. Now, you start walking out. I’ll be right behind you. Don’t go too fast. Take it easy, look like everything’s cool. And remember, if you peep one word, I’ll test this piece out on you.”
“Hey, I’m with you,” Danny insisted.
They walked together toward the door, with Ralph slightly behind Danny so that no one could see the bulge in his shirt.
They threaded their way past the work benches, where the other boys were busy on their projects. The two teachers paid no attention to them at all. They got past the last bench and were crossing the final five feet of open floor space to the door.
The door swung shut.
All by itself. It shut with a slam. All the power machinery stopped. The room went dead silent. Danny stopped in his tracks, only two steps from the door. He could hear Ralph breathing just behind him.
“ONE OF THE BOYS AT THE DOOR IS CARRYING SEVERAL POUNDS OF METAL,” said SPECS from a loudspeaker in the ceiling. “I HAVE NO RECORD OF PERMISSION BEING GIVEN TO CARRY THIS METAL AWAY FROM THE SHOP.”
Danny turned and saw all the guys in the shop staring at him and Ralph. The two teachers were hurrying toward them. With a shrug of defeat, Ralph pulled the gun from his shirt and held it out at arm’s length, by the barrel.
One of the teachers, his chunky face frowning, took the gun. “You ought to know better, Malzone.”
Ralph made a face that was half smile, half frown.
“And what’s your name?” the teacher asked Danny. “How do you fit into this? I haven’t seen you in here before.”
“He don’t fit in,” Ralph said, before Danny could answer. “He didn’t know anything about it. I built it all myself. He didn’t even know I had it on me.”
The teacher shook his head. “I still want your name, son.”
“Romano, Danny Romano.”
The second teacher took the gun from the first one, looked it over, hefted it in his hand. “Not a bad job, Malzone. Heavier than it needs to be. Who were you going to shoot?”
“Whoever got between me and the outside.”
The teacher said, “If you’d put this much effort into something useful, you could walk out the front gate, and do it without anyone trying to stop you.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“And, by the way, SPECS won’t let anybody through the door if he’s heavier than he was when he walked in. We’re all standing on a scale, right now. It’s built into the floor.”
“Thanks for telling me,” said Ralph.
“Okay, get out of here,” the teacher said. “And don’t either one of you come back until you’ve squared it with Dr. Tenny.”
Ralph started for the door. It clicked open.
Danny followed him.
Out in the hall, Danny said, “Thanks for keeping me off the hook.”
Ralph shrugged. “And I was afraid you was working for Tenny. With that lousy SPECS, he don’t need no finks.”
“What happens to you now?” Danny asked as they headed for the elevator.
“I’ll get a lecture from Tenny, and for a couple months I’ll have to take special classes instead of shop work.”
“Is that all?”
Ralph stopped walking and looked at Danny. His eyes seemed filled with tears. “No it ain’t all. I thought I’d be out of here tonight. Now I’m further behind the eight ball than ever. I don’t know when I’ll get out. Maybe never!”
Chapter Eleven
Danny worked hard for the next two weeks. He paid attention in classes. He passed his first reading test with SPECS, and Mr. Cochran let him pick out his own books. Danny started reading books about airplanes and rockets.
The arithmetic class with Joe Tenny was almost fun.
“You keep going this well,” Tenny told him, “and I’ll start showing you how to work with SPECS on really tough problems.”
Danny smiled and nodded, and tried not to show how much he wanted to get SPECS to work for him.
Danny worked especially hard in the language class, so that the teacher would let him take one of the class’s pocket tape recorders back to his room. For extra homework.
Sure.
The teacher—a careful, balding man—said he’d let Danny have the tape recorder “in a little while.”
Afternoons, Danny spent mostly in the gym. He took an asthma pill before every workout, but found that he needed another one after a few minutes of heavy work.
Ralph was still showing him dirty tricks, still telling him to “break Lacey’s head open.” Ralph even got into the ring and sparred with Danny.
And Danny took on a job. He joined the Campus Clean-up Crew. It was a pleasant outdoor job now that the weather had turned warm and the trees were in full leaf. Danny spent two hours each afternoon raking lawns, cutting grass, picking up any litter that the boys left around the campus. And he was also learning to spot the little black boxes lying nearly buried in the ground, the boxes that held the cameras and lasers and alarms for SPECS.
The day before his fight with Lacey, Danny’s language teacher finally let him have a pocket tape recorder. But it was too late to try a breakout before the fight. Danny figured he would need at least a week to get the right words from Joe Tenny onto a tape. Then he’d have to juggle the words onto another tape until he had exactly the right order to give SPECS.
Danny wasn’t looking forward to fighting Lacey. It would have been fine with him if he could have escaped the Center before the fight. But he wasn’t going to back out of it.
Maybe Lacey’ll help get me out of here, Danny thought, with a grim smile. On a stretcher.
Chapter Twelve
The gym had been changed into an arena. All the regular equipment had been put away, the ring dragged out to the center of the gym, and surrounded by folding chairs. All the chairs were filled with teachers and boys who cheered and hollered for their favorite boxers. And they booed the poor ones without mercy.
Danny could hear the noise of the crowd from inside the locker room. Ralph had helped him find a pair of trunks that fit him. They were bright red, with a black stripe. The color of blood, Danny thought. One of the gym teachers wrapped tape around Danny’s hands and helped him into the boxing gloves. Then they fit him with a head protector and mouthpiece.
There were no other boxers in the locker room. Danny’s fight was the last one of the evening. Lacey was getting ready in another locker room, on the other side of the building.
“Now remember,” Ralph whispered to Danny when the teacher left them alone, “get in close, grab him, trip him up, push him off-balance. Then hit him with everything you got! Elbows, head, everything. You got a good punch, so use it.”
Danny nodded.
The crowd roared and broke into applause. He could hear the bell at ringside ringing.
“Okay, Romano,” the teacher called from the doorway. “It’s your turn.”
The head protector felt heavy, and clumsy. The mouthpiece tastes funny, like a new automobile tire might taste, Danny thought.
As he entered the gym a big cheer went up. Danny started to smile, but then saw that the cheering was for Lacey, who was coming toward the ring from the other side of the gym.
As he walked toward the ring, boys hollered at him:
“You’re goin’ to get mashed, Romano!”
“Sock it to him, Danny!”
“Hey, skinny, you won’t last one round!”
Dr. Tenny was standing at the ringside steps. His jacket was off. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with no tie.
“All set, Danny?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve checked with the medics. They’re not too happy about you fighting.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Did you take a pill?” Joe asked.
Nodding, Danny said, “Two of ’em. Before I left my room.”
“Good. If you need more, I’ve got some right here in my pocket.”
“Thanks. I’ll be okay.”
Joe stepped aside and Danny climbed up into the ring, with Ralph right behind him. The crowd was cheering and booing at the same time. Guess who the cheers are for!
The referee was one of the gym teachers. He called the boys to the center of the ring and gave them a little talk:
“No hitting low, no holding and hitting, no dirty stuff. If I tell you to break it up, you stop fighting and step back. Just do what I tell you, and don’t lose your tempers. Let’s have a good, clean fight.”
They went back to their corners. Danny stood there, alone now, and stared at Lacey. He seemed to be all muscle, all hard and strong.
The bell rang.
Danny couldn’t do anything right. He charged out to the middle of the ring and got his head snapped back by Lacey’s jab. He swung, missed. Lacey moved too fast! Danny tried to follow him, tried to get in close. But Lacey danced rings around him, flicking out jabs like a snake flicks out his tongue. Most of them hit. And hurt.
The crowd was yelling hard. The noise roared in Danny’s ears, like the time he was at the seashore and a wave knocked him down and held him under the water.
Lacy slammed a hard right into Danny’s middle. The air gasped out of Danny’s lungs. He doubled over, tried to grab the black. His gloves reached Lacey’s body, but then slipped away. Danny straightened up, turned to find Lacey, and got another stinging left in his face.
It was getting hard to breathe. No, don’t! Danny told himself. Don’t get sick! But his chest was starting to feel heavy. Another flurry of punches to his body made it feel even worse.
Danny finally grabbed Lacey and pulled himself so close that their heads rubbed together.
“You want to dance, baby?” Lacey laughed.
Then, suddenly, he blasted half a dozen punches into Danny’s guts, broke away, and cracked a solid right to Danny’s cheek. Danny felt his knees wobble.
The bell rang.
Ralph was angry. “You didn’t do nothing I told you to! You got to get in close, hold him, butt him!”
Danny gasped, “You try it.”
He sat on the stool, chest heaving. His face felt funny, like it was starting to swell. It stung.
The bell sounded for the second round, and it was more of the same. Lacey was all over the ring, grinning, laughing, popping Danny with lefts and rights. Danny felt as if he was wearing iron boots. He just couldn’t keep up with Lacey. The crowd was roaring so loudly that it hurt his ears. He tasted blood in his mouth. And Lacey kept gliding in on him, peppering him with a flurry of punches, then slipping away before he could return a blow.
Danny’s chest was getting bad now. He was puffing, gasping, unable to get air into his lungs.
It seemed as if an hour had gone by. Finally, Lacey backed into the ropes and Danny made a desperate grab for him. He locked his arms around Lacey, wheezing hard.
“Hey, you sick?” Lacey’s voice, muffled behind the mouth protector, sounded in Danny’s right ear. “You sound like a church organ.”
He pushed Danny away, but instead of hitting him, just tapped his face with a light jab and danced off toward the center of the ring. The crowed booed.
“Finish him!”
“Knock him out, Lacey!”
The bell ended round two.
Joe Tenny was at his corner when Danny sagged tiredly on the stool.
“You’d better take another pill,” he said.
Shaking his head, Danny gasped out, “Naw … I’ll be … okay … Only one … more round.”
Tenny started to say something, then thought better of it. He went back down the stairs to his seat.
“You got to get him this round!” Ralph hollered in Danny’s ear, over the noise of the crowd. “It’s now or never! When th’ bell rings, go out slow. He thinks he’s got you beat. Soon’s he’s in reach, sock him with everything you’ve got!”
Danny nodded.
The bell rang. Danny pushed himself off the stool. He went slowly out to the middle of the ring, his hands held low. The referee was looking at him in a funny way. Lacey danced out, on his toes, still full of bounce and smiling.
